What I Wonder: Our Upcoming Transitions

On Monday I had lunch with a couple of girlfriends who quickly commented on how extremely relaxed I seemed, despite all that I have going on right now.  I was flattered, as I know that oftentimes I am annoyingly stressed out, and I was very happy that the girls were able to note my calm demeanor without me having to say that I really DO feel calm.  In fact, it's bizarre how calm I feel about everything.  I know that I will be closing the sale of our current home and the purchase of our next home only nine days before my due date.   I know that I have absolutely nothing packed (well nothing more than what we binned in order to put our home up for sale.)  I know that I can't do a ton of work moving houses.  I know that my body is about to go through a lot during the birth of my second baby.  I know that soon enough I will be spending hours each day nursing, changing diapers, and NOT SLEEPING.  I know that I have virtually nothing prepared for my maternity leave and I haven't even talked to the person who is going to sub for me (in my defense, I was just given a sub a few days ago)... yet I feel completely calm.  At least for now.

I thought a lot about the positive comments from the girls after I left that lunch. Why am I so calm?  I should be flipping out in typical Lavender-style.  Perhaps it's because I already went through a month-long period of mourning leaving our home and debating whether or not we were making the right decision by moving.  Perhaps it's because I feel like I still have enough time to get all of my work done for school before baby comes.  Perhaps it's because a lot of this is out of my control.  MOST LIKELY it's because I am constantly reassured by my favorite Bible Verse:

Here it is again in a paraphrased version:

So yeah, I am personally at peace right now.  Mental peace.  It feels great.  So what do I wonder this Wednesday, you ask?  Well this is going to sound SO Mom-ish, so be prepared...

                                            I wonder how William will handle it all.

Toddlers are interesting.  I believe that they are truly creatures of habit.  For example, every night when we give William a bath we have to do the EXACT SAME THING.  Whenever someone watches William when we are gone, we assure them that he will tell them what is next if they don't know so they don't need to worry about it.

Here is the bath/Band-Aid/book/bedtime routine we have fallen into for the past... hmmmmmm... I'd say five months at least.

We let him choose what color tablet he will use to dye the water and then he throws it in.  We bathe him, then we rinse his back, then we rinse his head.  We lift him out of the tub and then we dry him off.  He says, "Brush your teeth is next" ... which it is ... and then when that's done he will say, "Band-Aid is next!" ... which it is ... We have to give him a Charlie Brown Band-Aid every single night that he plasters on his bare chest and marches around saying, "I got a Band-Aid!"  Then we put his diaper on him, dress him in his PJs, and then he picks out a "chair book" (which is a book we read in the glider).  He hands me the book and then walks to the ottoman where my feet are propped, grabs both of my ankles and hoists himself up to the ottoman, says "I climb Mommy Mountain!" and then, kneeling on the ottoman, he holds his arms out to me and says, "You got me?"  And I always say, "I will always catch you" and he does a little bit of a lunge/leap forward to the chair (over the small separation between the ottoman and the glider) and then we cuddle up with his blankie and mimi and read the "chair book" of the night.  After the book is over, he slides off of the glider and goes under my right leg, back to the bookshelf saying, "I go in the hole!"  He picks up one more book, walks it to his bed, and lies down.  I read him this "bedtime book" and then we say our prayers.  I always take prayer requests first and they have been the same from William for at least three months now.  He always asks that we pray for, "Chuck E. Cheese, The Giraffe Store, The Letter Store, and the Big Box Store" (translated that means Chuck E. Cheese, Toys R Us, Babies R Us, and Costco - and the ironic thing is that we've only take him to the first three of these places about two times each since he could actually remember... we are evil parents who always tell him that these places are sleeping when he wants to go there... I promise I will take him back to Chuck E. Cheese before baby comes though.  I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do that for him after months of praying for CEC).  So we pray and then do "tucky tucky" which sometimes is "mumify" which once turned into "Dadify" and then later "Lavender-fy"... so funny.  Then I kiss him on his cheek, tell him that I love him so much and then Dom does the same and we turn off his light and leave the room.  EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.

So there, that's why I think toddlers are creatures of habit.  Not to mention how William has to give a hug, a kiss, and a high-five to everyone he says goodbye to... in that order.  He will literally grab your hand to slap it if you forget the high-five at the end.

Therefore, despite my personal calmness... I have come to realize that I am extremely nervous about how William will handle his upcoming changes.  I usually feel as though we are doing the right thing by changing a lot at once, so that we can just get it all over with, but perhaps that will make William go nuts.

What exactly are the changes that William will soon endure?

Well, for starters he will become a big brother.  When we ask if he is having a brother or a sister, he usually answers.  If he says brother, the name he says is Keegan.  If he says sister, the name he says is Hannah.  Neither of these are names we are using; they are the names of the youngest boy and girl at the babysitter's house.  Sometimes though, William will say NO when you ask him if he's having a brother or a sister.  I am sure this is perfectly normal, but it worries me a bit.  Life is going to be a LOT different for the little guy.  He won't be the only kid anymore.  I know that eventually he won't remember life as an only child, but I am sure the transitional phase is a challenge.

Another change is our big move to the 'burg.  William has only ever known this house to be his home, so I am worried about how he will handle the move.  He once looked at a picture of the house and said that it was Margaret's house (his babysitter's).  I realized that they do kind of resemble one another.  We ask him if he's ready to move to the big house, and again he usually answers "NO".

We are also moving William from the nursery (he has been in the crib converted into a toddler bed for a while now) to his "big boy room" when we move.  We figured it would just be easier for him to do the switch all at once.  However, we are keeping the same nursery furniture and bedding... which is b/c we have all gender-neutral stuff and because we are cheap.  I always said I was glad we didn't find out with the first baby so we could just cheap-out and use the same stuff over for the next kid, but now I worry about the fact that the nursery will be almost the SAME and William might think it's his room.  I am working hard to make his toddler room look more enticing than the nursery, but this is another unpredictable situation we'll soon be facing.

A couple of other changes that William must go through in the near future are getting rid of the mimi (binky) and potty training.  For now, I am not going to fret about either situation.  OK, so my 2 1/2 year old still uses a pacifier and wears diapers.  Well, I have bigger battles to fight right now.  I can't make him go through ALL of these changes at once, so I am not going to even bother.  In fact, my pediatrician told me to wait on the potty training until the end of the summer... so I might go with that advice.  I know my babysitter prefers it done over summer, but he won't even be three until November so I don't want to rush anything. At this rate maybe it will be NEXT summer. Not that I want to buy diapers for two...  He's not super interested in it right now, although he is starting to get the idea that he should be peeing and pooping in the Elmo potty and not in a diaper.  Even the change in the fact that now he tells us when he poops in his diaper is a positive one.  We are working with that and trying to remind him to tell us BEFORE he goes "next time".  Finally, I am going to switch his car seat position from behind me to behind the passenger seat.  This will allow me to hand him items easily.

I just don't want him to think he's "being replaced" by baby.  Or hate our new house b/c it comes with a baby.  Or get angry with Dom and me because we took him from the home where he took his first steps.

I will keep you posted on how William handles everything.  Of course many people smile and say that this is NOTHING and that their kids were perfectly adjusted within NO TIME and many others say it is a challenge, but like everything else we will get through it. I know all the lines.  I have heard them a million times and I am prepared to hear them a million more.  I am just not prepared to live it all out... quite yet.

Wish us luck! Chuck E. Cheese did!

 

Selling and Moving: The Timeline

People have been asking a lot about the progress of our home sale and purchase, so I figured it would make sense to put together a timeline of events here because I never remember who I told what to and when... and for a while things were being updated by the minute! Now that it is pretty settled and most of what is happening is figured out, I will fill everyone in on the entire process.

January 2012

• After months of talking about it, we decided to put our home on the market. The primary reasons for our move are to have a little more room, a fourth bedroom, and to be closer to things such as our jobs, babysitter, doctors, etc.  Plus we know that we will ultimately move anyway because our home is not big enough for us and we knew we were not going to send our kids to TPS.  Since interest rates are so low, we knew we could get far more bang-for-our-buck this year and since we "gambled" and lost in the housing market when we bought this place (because we bought in 07 during the peak of the market, the year before the crash when we could have got far more for the buck) we figured we should try to WIN with our next place.

• We made a few calls to our babysitter's former realtor.  We decided we wanted to go with him for our home sale.

February 2012

• During the first week of February, we met with our new realtor and determined what would need to be done in order to prep our home for sale.  He recommended a complete roof tear-off (the final project we needed to get to in order to basically have our home completely remodeled), buying bins and binning a lot of our excess "stuff" (as it was apparent that we were outgrowing our home), sanding and painting the rod iron handrails outdoors, putting a hook where the curtain rod to the downstairs storage shelves are just for added support, tear off the Styrofoam that Fred had used to "insulate" the vents in the basement, finish the trim on the front door that was never done, and thoroughly clean the entire house.

• I should note that during this meeting, William was extremely sick. He had two blow-outs while our realtor was here meeting with us and spent the rest of the time with his eyes half-open, watching a movie.  I felt so bad for the little guy.  February was a really rough month for us over-all and we spent a large part of it sick.  I never got it as bad as Dom later did, but I attribute that to the the fact that I got the flu shot and Dom did not.

• By the middle of the month, only weeks after meeting with the realtor, we had a roofer out here and our complete tear-off and replacement was complete. Seriously, when Dom gets told what to do ... it gets done in no time flat. Luckily for us we had a very warm winter, so that conditions for roofing (and the price during the off-season) were unbeatable!

March 2012

•  We began to have second thoughts about selling our home. These second thoughts mixed in from this point in time until the minute we ended up agreeing to a price with our buyer. We are big fans of Dave Ramsey's, and the fact that we had refinanced our home just last year for a 15 year mortgage that theoretically we could pay off within two years was very much a deterrent to buying a new home that costs twice as much (or more) as this one originally did. 

• Due to our second thoughts, we dragged our feet with the selling process.  I had purchased some extra large bins from Big Lots at this time, but I only filled one up with some clothes that William had out-grown. Work was busy for both of us at this time, so we weren't focused on the selling process.Dom kept talking about sanding and painting the rod iron handrails outside, but the weather conditions were not prime for painting, so we didn't do much at all.

•  At the end of the month, our realtor just "happened to be in the neighborhood" and dropped by to see how our progress was going.  It was the WORST possible time for him to randomly drop by (a few days before my spring break, when we had planned on working on our to-do list) and the house was in complete disaster.  We had just finished eating dinner and this time we hadn't even cleaned up the dishes like we usually do.  Dom had said to let them sit so we could play with Will before putting him to bed, because it had become more apparent that William needed some one-on-one time with us.  It was around 7PM when our realtor stopped by, William's typical "winding down" time. With an exciting guest in the house, rather than winding down, William WOUND UP and went nuts.  He was chucking toys everywhere and screaming, "Can you hear me?!?!?!" into his mega phone as the adults tried to meet.  I can't even describe the pure chaos that was going on, but it ended with William yelling, "cash" (meaning "catch") and whipping a toy right into our realtor's chest.  It wasn't something that hurt or anything, but just embarrassing. The time was now like 8:45 and he was WAY passed his bedtime.  I knew the following morning was going to be a nightmare...

• Perhaps it was because of our realtor's random drop-by, but after this visit I was feeling very anxious about the entire for sale process.  I felt totally unprepared, and since I was about 26 weeks pregnant, I began to worry about the amount of time and pressure this would take on our family and my body.  Had we made a rash decision? Either way, we had just promised our realtor to have things ready for pictures by Easter.  Actually, Dominic promised that. I promised the exact opposite:  That there was no way we were going to be ready to have the pics taken in a week's time with work being so busy.  I love my husband, but he thinks in terms of getting stuff done and not in terms of the time we have to do them.

 April 2012

• Things started happening quickly in April.  From here on out, I will try to use dates to show you how close the events happened.

• April 14th - We completed our "Spring Cleaning" and made the house as organized as possible. We finished up the projects our realtor had suggested, except for the one about painting the rod iron railings outside. We still haven't even done that, and now we probably never will...

• Sat. April 21st - Our realtor came over to take the pictures of our home in the morning. (See I told you we would never get this done by Easter!) We also finished signing all of the paperwork for our home sale.

• Sun. April 22nd - After MONTHS of dragging his feet, Dominic finally broke the news to our neighbor that he is close with.  I know he was putting it off because the neighbor was going to be sad.  They have built a great relationship and friendship, and the entire home sale is very hard for us because we don't want to leave our neighbors and neighborhood.

• Mon. April 23rd - We put the sign in our front yard.  Our home was officially on the market.

• Sun. April 29th - We had our first and only "Open House".  We had three couples and one neighbor go through our home.  One of the couples seemed very promising.

May 2012

• Thurs. May 3rd - The promising couple took a second look at our home.

• Sun. May 6th - We went out looking at homes for a second time. This was the day we found the home we ended up falling in love with.  William was even with us this time (this was the only time, the other times he was being watched by either his regular babysitter or our good friend Danielle - thanks to both for all of the support during all of this!)  I'm glad that William was there this time, since we are now buying a home we saw that day.  The house was not one I was even sure I wanted to see at first, but I threw it on the list and when we were there I FELT something.  I specifically even told that to Dominic as we were leaving.  I really do believe that God gives you a little nudge when you find the right one.  The way the home is designed is completely perfect for what we are looking for.  It is not grand or showy, like many of the places we looked at in Perrysburg.  There is nothing wrong with "grand or showy", it's just not who we are at this point in our lives.  It's a large home (over 2400 square feet with a complete basement) but it feels so HOMEY.  The biggest selling points were the fact that the upstairs floor plan feels like it's HUGGING you in a circular motion, there has only been one owner and it was custom built so almost everything is very nice and extremely well-cared for, it's in the township so we don't have to pay income taxes, it's super close to almost EVERYTHING yet it feels a little "removed" from the hustle and bustle of city/town life, and perhaps most importantly it has an awesome, private, good-sized backyard.  As with all properties within our price range in Perrysburg, there is a downfall...you can hear the turnpike because it runs right behind the house. :-( Yet that's most likely the reason for the very good price!  So it's half a dozen in one hand, six in the other... and this home has EVERYTHING ELSE we are looking for.

• May 12 - We looked at homes for a 3rd time, including a 2nd visit to the home we felt pulled toward.  We looked at it longer and more closely at this time, checking for details that we might have glossed over during our first visit.  I took a plethora of pictures.  This home was the first we saw that day, and nothing before or after it ever measured up to the way we felt about this place. Dominic agreed that this was the home for us.

• May 25 - I got a text from Dom shortly after school.  I will probably always remember this, because it was the Friday before exams and I was sitting at my desk finishing up the last bits of my exam.  I saw the message at 3:15.  It simply stated, "Got an offer.  Realtor wants us to call him when we get together today." Instantly I broke into tears. It was all happening, and happening so fast. We would soon be moving away from the first house we ever called home, the place where William grew up, took his first steps, and the only place he knows as "home", the place where we poured our blood/sweat/and tears and remodeled almost EVERYTHING, creating our perfectly designed house.  It was a lot to take in at once.  I cried by myself in my classroom for a good 20 minutes before going down the hall just to cry for another 20 minutes while I was making 90 copies of my 16 page exam.  I know that some people will want to attribute this to the fact that I am pregnant, but it's so much more than that. Many of you know that Dom and I hand-designed and remodeled our entire home with the help of his father and some friends. We feel very tied to the home, and it is challenging and emotional to leave it.  
• Later that evening, on our way to home group, we heard the offer from our realtor.  I felt as though it was a slap in the face, but looking back I shouldn't have taken it so personally.  It's a buyer's market and what this guy did was start a conversation that eventually got us to a point of agreement.  We spent the next few days countering with the guy.

• May 29 - We went out looking at homes for the 4th time (we saw about 20 homes total) and saw the house we liked for a 3rd time. We also saw another house that was new to the market on this day. My realtor and I liked it, but Dom wasn't thrilled. It was a lot smaller on the inside, but the backyard was amazing.  They had a long, fenced-in lot with nothing behind it but a field (which knowing Perrysburg will one day become a shopping center or highway).  They also had a sweet glassed-patio, hot tub, amazing landscaping, and an in-ground pool. Yet there were some features in the house that we didn't like as much and like I already mentioned, it was smaller on the inside than the first home we liked. They were asking the same price as the home we liked, so it seemed as though they were trying to recoup some of their "utopian yard" costs.  Ultimately, we ended our day at the home we were still feeling pulled toward and it felt as though we were kicking off our shoes at the end of the day.  We even said, "Honey! I'm home!" as we entered the front door.  This was the home for us. Earlier that evening, our realtor had given us some really great news... the owners of this home had JUST CLOSED on their new home on this exact day.  As my coworker and friend later said to me when I told her I was looking for a sign, "That's not just a sign!  That's a kick AND a push!"  I couldn't agree more.  God had been directing us to this home since the first day we saw it, and this was to be the home for us. To top it off, we signed the sale papers for our current home at the new home's kitchen table that very night.  Things were set in motion.

• May 30 - The following day, we had agreed to the price we wanted to offer on the home we wanted to buy and we put our offer in.  Up until this point, there hadn't been much activity on this home since it was placed up for sale in January.  However, we were getting word from their realtor that there were two more scheduled showings that week on the house and one was a doctor who was currently in Italy.  We wanted to act and act fast, since there was nothing else on the market that compared to this place in our minds and our budgets.  We spent the next couple of days countering with the family.  We had asked for their kitchen table and television console because it perfectly matches their woodwork, but they initially came back and told us that the furniture was NOT for sale. 

June 2012

• June 2nd - We settled on an acceptable price for the new home.  Fortunately for us, it included the kitchen table AND the television console (which we really needed after agreeing to sell our bookshelves that we built as our current entertainment center with our home.)  Furthermore, our final agreement included their LCD television that was sitting on the console, an amp that is in the console which amplifies the speaker system that runs throughout the entire home (owner's brother is an electrical engineer who custom-wired the speakers throughout the home when it was built), and a large armoire and an older-style tv in their basement!  So I would say we made out ok... less furniture to buy which is great since the baby will be coming at the same time as we are closing on this house.

• June 5th - The buyer of our home had our home inspected.  We are now working on three small issues: replacing a missing spring in one of the master bedroom windows, adhering the electric panel to the siding, and spraying for carpenter ants.  Man, I wish I would have sprayed for the ants a month ago.  They have been driving me nuts since it got warm out!  Now I won't get to reap the benefits of the exterminator. 

• June 8th - We did our inspection on our future home.  Their house is 15 years old, so things are starting to come to the end of their life.  There were some minor problems and a couple bigger ones.  The main concern is a piece of flashing that is missing on one of the spots on their roof which has caused water to get into the garage ceiling.  Additional items to be repaired include the sump pump, the electric box outside, and leveling the A/C unit.  

Where We Are Now

• Now we call for repairs, have things repaired, and wait... Please keep your fingers crossed that everything turns out hunky-dory and that we are able to make a smooth transition on June 29th when we are tentatively scheduled to close on both of our homes.  Side note:  We worked it out so that we will have possession of our current home for 30 days after closing, yet we will have possession at either closing or 5 days after for our new home.

Thank you for your support through all of this. It has been an emotional journey, but we are grateful for God's blessings and we look forward to moving on with our lives and raising our children in the home they will always think of as their "childhood home". 

A Top-Secret Sneak Peak of the FUTURE Krupp Family Residence!

Email from 11-18-09 - The Birth of William

Here is the email that I sent my family, coworkers, and Masters classmates the first full day we were home from the hospital.  I thought I had posted it on this blog as well, but I see that I didn't. My apologies!

"I can't type much now, but I'll do my best. Here are the basics that everyone is asking about... I'm sure Jan really has been wondering about all the nitty-gritty details, but I'll leave them out.

I had been having mild labor pains all day Friday and finally after timing the early labor contractions at 3-5 minutes apart lasting for about 45 seconds to a minute, we decided to go to the hospital at 2AM. Luckily I showered before we went b/c I didn't get to for a loooooooong time after! :-P

After a really rough 29 hours, I delivered William Elixander at 7:32 am on Sunday, Nov. 15th. Dominic and I were both Sunday babies and our bdays were on Sundays this year, so we think that's pretty cool. Will was 21 3/4 inches long and weighed 8 lbs 14 ounces. Both the OB and nurse on duty said that the longest baby they had ever delivered was 22 inches, so our big boy was almost a record-tier. And I beat Carrie's baby size with Xavier so now I have all the bragging (or complaining) rights! William doesn't look that BIG right now, he's just really long. (Allison, our stories were unfortunately rather familiar! Have pains all one day, go in another day, a deliver a day after that - I think you cursed me when you told me your story - JK!) BTW - William is Dominic's middle name and Elixander is a name that my Mom found in my family lineage while doing geneology. Dom and I both loved the name Eli, but with Elijah being so popular now and that just not seeming like a name we would use we instantly fell in love with Elixander (pronounced like Alexander, but with an "L" sound at the beginning.) It is our hope that since we named William after Dom's middle name that Will will one day name his son Elixander something.... and he can go by Eli if he wants. Of course, you all know me to be the one who has her first grandson named already! Such pressure for poor Will!

BIRTHday Gift from St. Luke's

William Elixander Krupp - Born on 11/15/09 at 7:32am.  8 lbs 14 oz, 21 3/4 inches long

The "only two people per room" rule with the H1N1 virus made the time at the hospital really tough b/c we never knew if people were sitting in the waiting room waiting to visit ... so we'd talk to the people in our room for a long time without even knowing other people were waiting to see us. Due to this rule, we had to tell the same stories over and over when it would have been simpler to have all our guests listen to it once and stay in our room for a while and talk to one another as well as visit with the baby. Instead we were pretty much flooded with visitors from the first minute he was born until the day we left, which was awesome but didn't allow us much time to rest.

Proud Mommy - 11/16/09

Proud Daddy - 11/16/09

So anyway, we were at the hospital until Tuesday evening. Tuesday was the worst day of Will's little life because he got circumcised first thing in the AM, and right after that he had his tongue snipped b/c he was tongue tied, then he had three blood tests done, got immunized, had his hospital pics taken, had his hearing test, and on top of everything else he had to take a bath. :-( The entire day was a huge emotional roller coaster for both Dominic and myself.

We just got home last night (Tuesday evening) at about 5:30. It was crazy to be outside for the first time since Friday night, and it was really bizarre b/c the radio was playing Christmas music so I felt like I time-warped about a month... oh 101.5 The River.... but it was really cool b/c it just made us even more excited for Christmas now that we have the best gift ever. Anyway, we left later yesterday that we wanted to b/c Will had an elevated level of jaundice (his level was 14 and anything 12 or higher is considered elevated... if it was 20 or so he would have had to stay at the hospital) and so he has to be on a Bili Rubin (sp?) blanket. Sooooo we had to wait around because he had to get that blanket set up from a company who brings it in and explains it all to us. Don't worry if you have no idea what that means, b/c I didn't until yesterday, but it's better than having to be under the Bili Rubin lights. So all last night we hung out with our little glow worm and felt terrible for him. So much for playing fun dress-up games and hanging out in the bouncy seat. :-(

Our Little Glowworm - 11/18/09

We took William off of the blanket for a little bit, just so we could hold him better. 11/19/09

Sooooooooooo after our first night at home, we had to go back to get bloodwork tested today at St. Luke's to see if his level had gone down at all. Therefore we were right back at the hospital this morning on day 3 of his life. Sadly, his test results came back even higher, so we have an appointment with the pediatrician tomorrow and after that we have to go AGAIN to St. Luke's for another blood work test tomorrow. This is all so sad, emotional, and overwhelming. I just wish we could enjoy this time at home together on our first day as a family, but instead we went to St. Luke's this am and just got back .... and it's already 3:45. I feel like it was just morning! Added to the fact that we haven't slept much at all.... I have only slept 18 hours from the time I went into the hospital Friday night/Saturday morning at 2:30 AM until today...

Anyway, if you are a praying person please just pray that William's Bili Rubin level is down tomorrow so he can finally be off of the blanket and able to move around more.

I hope everything is going well for all of you."

Father and Son on Day #1 ... This Makes My Heart Melt <3